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...The Berendon Glacier and many others too
 Today we returned to the Salmon Glacier Summit but this time went further into the icefields. The road continues to the Berendon Glacier below which was the Portal Camp for the old Grand Duc copper mine. This mine was started in 1964 and a large camp to house the miners was set up at the base of the Berendon Glacier.This area gets some of the heaviest snowfalls on earth, averaging about 800 inches each year, with the record at over 1,100 inches. To the men working at the camp, the 16 feet of snow that fell in the second week of February 1965 merely meant some extra work to keep their work areas usable. But high above the camp, incredible pressures were building as the snow deepened. The snow piles up deeply in the coastal mountains - it's heavy snow, perfect for building glaciers, awful to work in. On the steep mountainsides above Portal Camp of the Granduc Mine, millions of tons of snow let loose at 10:16 AM, February 18, 1965. Virtually the entire camp was wiped out by the avalanche. Some of the survivors were missed when the slide split into two forks, and many were able to dig themselves out when they were buried. A massive rescue operation was mounted but 26 men lost their lives.
Portal Camp was never reopened. No technology available could protect men working in that location against another avalanche. The options for extracting the ore were few - an open-pit mi |
